The Forte amps to me have a pedigree that is hard to beat, the designer of which I believe is Nelson Pass (one of the gods if not the god of SS amp design).
I had one here for repair a while back, can't remember which one it was but it sounded very good with a passive preamp, it had quite a high Class A bias as it ran very hot.
They also use what's called IGBT output transistors which are like a Mosfets on the input, but Bi-Polar (bjt) output, so they can give better current supply to harder speaker loads like your Apogee's than a ordinary Mosfet can supply.
I say they are a poor mans version of Nelson's top amps. And can be picked up cheap, do your home work as there are a few different models, get the right one and you'll be happy.
Cheers George
